Tourism clusters as a tool for the improvement of rural competitivenes: first experiences from Slovakia

Slovakia is the country with unusually appropriate conditions for development of tourism. Therefore the governmental programmes with economic development of rural area as one of their priorities emphasise diversification of economic activities including creation of new work opportunities in the sphere of tourism. In connection with development of tourism and rural areas there appear some studies based on concept of clusters. The aim of paper is to describe potential benefits of cluster concept application not only on tourism development in rural areas, but also on general local and regional development. On the other side, in the context of the overestimation of assets from application of cluster concept for individual players and region, we are trying to stress the attention on some dangers for involved companies and own rural development. In the second part of paper we introduce the first attempt of Slovak tourism cluster establishment. Organization “Cluster Liptov“ (name of the historical Slovak region) is a result of agreement between crucial public and private players who decided to cooperate with aim to increase the visit rate of region and to achieve individual successes by common prosperity.